


didn't i tell you? i can't sleep without your arms around me (maybe it was a dream)

by kwritten



Series: Femlash February 2016 [15]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, First Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 11:23:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6152102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Weekends in the Weasley household were like any other day in the Weasley household: wild and messy and loud. Molly perhaps in the kitchen with three pots on the stove and both ovens on and a pair of knitting needles hovering over the table while the broom dances around her heels; Arthur perhaps in his workshop tinkering with something that’s smelly or explodes or occasionally sends out a shrieking siren for at least an hour; a game of Quidditch permanently going in the garden; boys of all sizes trampling up and down stairs shouting and laughing and sometimes on fire and other times whispering secret messages. The Weasleys were a loud sort of people, with the same friends they’ve had since they were toddlers and no need to travel for adventure when they could make one in their own backyard.</p><p>(Hermione found that despite having no desire whatsoever to shout or run or play Quidditch in the yard, that she much preferred a <i>quiet</i> weekend at the Weasley residence than the deafening stillness of the Granger’s neat and orderly little world. But then, it wasn’t a lesson she learned all at once.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	didn't i tell you? i can't sleep without your arms around me (maybe it was a dream)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MarauderCracker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarauderCracker/gifts).



> I'm so sorry this is coming **so** belated! I am the worst at fic deadlines sometimes and lol Fem-Feb is never a perfect experience, hope you like it!

Weekends in the Granger household were quiet affairs. Mother perhaps in her garden reading the novel her book club had assigned that she hadn’t meant to put off to the last minute; father perhaps in the kitchen baking up something special he had seen in a magazine that he’ll fail at miserably the first four times he attempts it, but they eat it with a smile. Sometimes there is a trip to the market or to the shore when the weather is warm or a picnic. The Grangers are quiet sort of people, with the same friends they’ve had since primary and no desire whatsoever to go on any adventures, even small ones that will only take an afternoon.

Weekends in the Weasley household were like any other day in the Weasley household: wild and messy and loud. Molly perhaps in the kitchen with three pots on the stove and both ovens on and a pair of knitting needles hovering over the table while the broom dances around her heels; Arthur perhaps in his workshop tinkering with something that’s smelly or explodes or occasionally sends out a shrieking siren for at least an hour; a game of Quidditch permanently going in the garden; boys of all sizes trampling up and down stairs shouting and laughing and sometimes on fire and other times whispering secret messages, Molly shouting at them from the kitchen or the pantry or the laundry or the garden when black smoke or bright blue glitter suddenly appears where it shouldn’t. The Weasleys were a loud sort of people, with the same friends they’ve had since they were toddlers and no need to travel for adventure when they could make one in their own backyard.

(Hermione found that despite having no desire whatsoever to shout or run or play Quidditch in the yard, that she much preferred a _quiet_ weekend at the Weasley residence than the deafening stillness of the Granger’s neat and orderly little world. But then, it wasn’t a lesson she learned all at once.)

i

Ginny found her curled up on a sofa in a hidden-away corner that no one used and most of the Weasley family forgot about, with a pair of oversized headphones covering her ears and a large book perched on her knees. She managed to plop down next to Hermione without the other girl even noticing her approach.

“You can’t use those in here,” she tapped on the headphones and Hermione scowled at her.

“I KNOW THAT,” Hermione replied a bit _too_ loudly. “ MY WALKMAN DOESN’T WORK BUT IT’S THE ONLY WAY TO CUT OUT THE NOISE.”

Ginny grinned broadly, her canines flashing in a disquieting way, “Too loud in the Weasley house? Never?!”

Hermione stuck out her tongue at her, but Ginny just rolled her eyes and stalked out of the little nook.

Hermione went back to her book in the meantime.

The earplugs under the oversized headphones kept out most of the noise, but the sofa shook every time a door shut and rumbled when one of the boys galloped down the stairs and there was always a faint hum from the kitchen that she attributed after a few days to the magic. It wasn’t so much that she _minded_ the noise but that she wanted an hour or two a day without it. Just peace and quiet. Some time with her book. Not all the time or all at once, just a moment here and there.

Even in the dead of night, something was creaking or groaning or thrumming or humming or whistling. The Burrow was as alive as its residents.

Just as Fred, George, and Percy got into such a loud row on their brooms just outside the window next to Hermione’s ear so that she could nearly hear every graphic syllable, Ginny returned carrying a large, ancient, and slightly dusty Victrola in her skinny arms. She grinned down at Hermione and sat the thing down on a pile of teetering boxes next to the window.

“Want to guess what this is?”

Hermione shook her head. All week long, ever since her parents had agreed she could spend some of her summer holiday with the Weasley’s, Mr. Weasley had been dragging her out to his workshop so she could explain Muggle technology to him. No matter how many times she explained, he still didn’t seem to understand that the intricacies of mechanical engineering and computer programming were not common knowledge. Even to an especially bright eleven year old.

Ginny flipped her hair over one shoulder (an art Hermione had caught her practicing in the mirror on more than one occasion) and placed the needle on a slightly silver _ish_ record before ripping Hermione’s headphones off and placing her hands on her hips triumphantly.

Nothing.

She heard nothing.

Hermione pulled her earplugs out tentatively and strained a bit, there was a slight rustling, like a wind blowing through the branches of a tree.

Ginny opened the curtain of the window, letting in the bright sun, and also the image of three boys astride broomsticks, shouting and gesturing wildly at each other, one nearly dangling off his from laughing so loud.

Nothing.

She heard none of it. Not a sound. Not even the barest whisper of a suggestion of a sound.

Ginny picked a book up off the floor and plopped down on the sofa next to Hermione, curling up into a little ball with her feet tucked under her and her chin perilously close to her knees. “You’re welcome,” she said primly.

Hermione raised a single eyebrow.

“I’ve been living here for eleven years. You’ve been here less than ten days and you really thought that I didn’t have _some_ way of managing the chaos?”

iii

It was so warm that Hermione had borrowed a pair of Ginny’s shorts and they had spent most of the morning outside with the boys throwing balls of water at each other – much like a water balloon fight but with none of the rubber bits to clean up afterwards. Each summer at the Burrow taught Hermione one more thing that the Wizarding World could give her that the Muggle World could not. (And equal parts of the reverse, if she was being completely honest.)

“No! It’s loop… _swoop_ … and THEN pull,” Ginny’s deft hands pulled the ragged bit of sock out of Hermione’s fingers and demonstrated for the third time that morning how to properly get a knitted stitch from one needle to the next.

Hermione leaned back against the arm of the sofa and stretched her bare legs across Ginny’s lap. “I’m all thumbs, Gin,” she groaned, her exasperation nearly making the walls fizzle and spark.

She was beginning to seriously doubt the Weasley women – and Charlie’s – insistence that socks was a good place to start learning how to knit. They handed her five tiny needles with sharp points on both ends and beamed at her, as if she wasn’t in danger of impaling herself or someone else a grand total of ten times before she was through.

“Good,” Ginny pursed her lips at the yarn and began doing something that looked terribly intricate and exciting with the small crochet hook she kept in her bun, pulling and twisting and tugging at the yarn until the monstrous holes Hermione had somehow constructed disappeared. “I was starting to think you were an expert in everything and let me tell you, that’s a _pain_ to be around.”

A ball hit the window behind her, but neither cared nor took note. A flash of one of the twins breezed past, causing a shadow to cross over Ginny’s face.

A trickle of moisture, left over from their morning water war or possibly just sweat, made its way down the side of Ginny’s neck, distracting Hermione from watching her mistakes be corrected in Ginny’s thin fingers. Hermione had a sudden urge to kiss the three errant freckles that traced a trail from her chin to her collarbone, but she was also sticky and hot and had just found a comfortable position so movement wasn’t worth it – not even for the taste of Ginny’s damp skin.

Ginny handed the small tube back to Hermione with a serious sort of glare around her eyes but lips twitching with a smile, “No one actually wants to be perfect. Perfect people are unbearable to live with.”

“You should know,” she smirked, “You _do_ live with Percy.”

Ginny stared wildly at her, eyes wide and solemn, and after a beat nodded very slowly, “It is such a burden to be constantly in the presence of such greatness.”

They collapsed into giggles instantly and Hermione shook so hard with laughter five more stitches fell off one of her needles, but thankfully Ginny was there to rescue her and in the corner their Victrola sang a faint bird call.

v

Gimmauld Place was sometimes too quiet and other times so so loud that Hermione felt as though she may scream. Here, they didn’t have Mr. Weasley’s ancient Victrola to stomp out the noise – or the lack thereof – and so she resorted to more Muggle means.

“La la la…” Hermione sang under her breath as they wiped down three inches of dust in yet another stuffy room while Kreacher pouted in a corner. “Won’t you staaaaaaay….”

Ginny leapt into the middle of the room, holding a broom out in front of her like a microphone and began belting, “I JUST CAN’T GET YOU OUTTA MY HEAD!”

Hermione shook her head slightly, but kept up the rhythm of _la la la, la la la-la-laaa_ ’s as Ginny proceeded to completely butcher the song that she had only heard from Hermione’s tone-deaf lips.

“ WON’T YOU STAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY! STAY FOOOOREEEVEEERRRR AND EVER AND EVER AND EVEEEEEEEEER” Ginny wiggled her hips and moved across the room to grab Hermione’s hand and twirl her around.

Awkward, clumsy, tone-deaf, dances on the up-beat instead of the down, kicked out of three ballet schools as a child, Hermione Granger gave in and spent the next twenty minutes dancing bare-footed along the hardwood floor in Ginny’s arms, crooning various renditions of popular Muggle songs in a terrible mockery of the term _music_ and laughing so hard her stomach ached for hours.

George found them in a heap on the floor, breathless and a bit red in the face, a frustrated expression on his face. “What have you two been doing?”

Before hearing their response, he flopped down on the floor with them, head on Hermione’s stomach and legs sprawled over Ginny’s.

“Cleaning,” Hermione said, coughing slightly as he landed on her. “Can’t you tell?”

George inspected the room briefly and then closed his eyes, “Great job, ladies.”

“Tell mum you were helping us?” Ginny flopped back and adjusted Hermione’s head onto her shoulder.

“I love you best of all my sisters, Ginevra.”

“She’s your only sister,” Hermione poked him in the head.

“Mmmhmmm… that’s what _you_ think,” George hummed. He reached up with one hand and tried to pat Hermione on the head, but only managed to slap both Hermione and Ginny in the face with his fingers a little. “If I can blame you for a job done poorly, you’re a sister.”

A few minutes later a rather harried looking Mrs. Weasley stomped through the door, a sheepish Ron at her heels. “There you three are! And this room hasn’t even been touched.” She fixed them with a glare, “Hermione, I am surprised! Get to work!”

George’s light chuckle turned into a downright giggle when Hermione and Ginny pounced and began tickling him everywhere they could pinch, while Ron stood awkwardly in the corner.

Later, at a very somber dinner due to the absence of Tonks and the general strain in the air coming from everyone over the age of twenty, Ginny blurted out _IT WASN’T ME_ in a perfect imitation of Hermione’s not-so-perfect imitation of Shaggy, which resulted in the two of them giggling into each other’s necks while the twins got a little persnickety over not being let in on the joke.

vii

War is a tricky, slippery thing. It doesn’t begin all at once and yet, can spring up on you in surprise. Maybe the first Wizarding War had never really ended, she’d just been living in the intermission all this time.

Not that the past couple of years in the Muggle World were all sunshine and rainbows. In the brief moments that she allowed herself to look back at her old world, her parent’s world, there was trouble brewing and stewing all over the globe. If she had never known about magic, maybe she would have been a dentist like her parents, or a politician, or a social worker – and then she would _know_ more about the world than the snippets she heard on the radio or on the television as she passed from her room to the garden or from the kitchen to the pantry. Tanks rolling into desert scenes seemed more theoretical and manageable than this … whatever this was. Whatever she was about to walk into, armed with only a wand and two hapless teenage boys and a bag full of odds and ends that fit on her wrist.

“You should say goodbye now,” Ginny whispered one night, from her bed, long after the rest of the Burrow had fallen asleep.

Hermione turned over on her side and whispered to the lamp so that it lit up a faint glow over the two beds, but didn’t say anything. Ginny turned on her side as well so that she look over at her.

“I’m going to worry the whole time you’re gone.”

“I’m going to worry the whole time I’m gone,” Hermione whispered back.

She knew Ginny like she knew her own heart, like she knew Ron’s stubbornness, like she knew Harry’s sarcastic wit, like she knew George’s sensitive self-worth, like she knew Luna’s secrets. She knew Ginny perhaps better than that, but she liked to pretend that there was still a secret to discover, or that she had hidden a part of _herself_ away.

She knew Ginny like she knew her own heart, and she’d bet a million Galleons that not taking Ginny with them wasn’t going to change the status of her safety, she’d still be fighting. Maybe a better fight. Certainly one equally as necessary. And just as dangerous.

Stay or go, Hermione wasn’t equipped with the strength to keep Ginny safe from harm.

Ginny could totally take her in a fight, wand or no wand. And Ginny wasn’t the type to sit back and play it safe when she could be on the front lines. She had the heart of a general and Hermione would never take that away. Ginny wouldn’t be Ginny without that fire lighting up her spine.

Hermione hummed under her breath for a moment and then sat up and crossed the small space between the beds and crawled in beside Ginny. They rarely touched with intention in the small cramped room, preferring to maintain their relationship – stolen kisses and lingering fingers and legs wrapped around legs – in the halls and rooms and spaces outside. As if in preparation of it all falling apart. As if in preparation for one of them not coming to bed one night.

They were too young to think that way, maybe, and yet…

Ginny immediately clung to Hermione, lying her head down on Hermione’s shoulder and pressing her face into Hermione’s long neck.

“I can’t go with you,” Ginny said in the exact moment that Hermione croaked out, “I can’t take you with me.”

They never said goodbye, just held each other that night and every night until Ginny walked into an empty room.

(That first night George wandered in sometime after midnight, after the terror of the wedding feast and the aftermath, and found her curled up in a ball on the spare bed, staring out the window. She didn’t cry and that didn’t worry him and they didn’t talk and that didn’t worry him. It was the first night of their war.)

(That first night Hermione hunkered down between Ron and Harry and they didn’t ask her what she had left behind because they all had left something behind and she didn’t cry, but Ron did a little and that was okay. It was the first night of their war.)

vi

Hermione frowned down at the book in her lap and hissed.

Ginny slapped her head playfully, “Stop being such a baby, I’m not even pulling that hard.” Her knees tightened on either side of Hermione’s shoulders, her fingers pulling gently at Hermione’s hair. She claimed to be concocting some sort of braid, something Hermione had only ever allowed her own mum to attempt and that event was many years in the past. Aside from the Yule Ball, Hermione kept her hair long and natural.

Hermione closed her eyes for a moment, letting the moment sweep over her. The warmth of Ginny’s legs pressed against her shoulders and arms, the feel of her hands in her hair, the chill of evening coming through the open window with the dwindling light of twilight, the scent of Ginny’s skin mixed with her favorite cherry lotion and something rich coming up from the kitchen downstairs.

A sharp tug on her head caused her to open her eyes and sigh in frustration.

“Keep reading, and back up a few sentences. It was just getting good,” Ginny reprimanded.

Hermione cleared her throat, “ _Do you think I am an automaton?—a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!—I have as much soul as you—_ ”

“THERE YOU GIRLS ARE,” Mrs. Weasley suddenly burst upon them with a bright smile. She maneuvered her wide frame into the small nook, over Hermione’s legs stretched out on the floor, and plopped down on the sofa between Ginny and the window. “Your father and Bill had a bright idea to prepare dinner themselves tonight, Merlin help us.”

“Harry will know what to do, I’m sure,” Hermione said cheerily, wondering if it was safer to stay upstairs away from the impending chaos, or if it was worth the amusement to venture down to watch.

Mrs. Weasley sighed and sunk back down into the sofa, “It really is _lovely_ in here, girls.”

Ginny reached her left hand over to the arm of the sofa on her right, picked up a tangle of yarn and needles, and thrust it at her mother, “ _It’s against the rules to be idle here._ ”

Mrs. Weasley lifted it close to her nose and winced, “Hermione, what have you done now?”

Hermione groaned, but couldn’t move due to Ginny’s still-tight grip in her hair. 

Ginny nudged Hermione with her knee. “Go back to the nightingale for mum.”

“ _Again_? Gin I’ve read this part three times already!”

“I’ve never heard it!” Mrs. Weasley protested. “Is the plot confusing?”

Hermione cleared her throat and began, glad Ginny couldn’t see that she rolled her eyes a bit before beginning to read, “ _‘Jane, do you hear the nightingale singing in the wood? Listen!’_ ”

“Who is talking?” Mrs. Weasley whispered to Ginny, the knitting needles clacking comfortably behind Hermione’s head. 

“Shhh!” Ginny giggled. “Just keep reading, hon.”

_Hon. Honey._

_My darling. My dear._

The words slipped out from Ginny’s lips with an ease that even after all this time, Hermione was a little jealous of. 

She leaned back into Ginny a tiny bit more, and picked up the book, “ _‘In listening, I sobbed convulsively; for I could repress that I endured no longer; I was obliged to yield, and I was shaken from head to foot with acute distress. When I did speak . . . ’_ ”

vi

The world was changing too fast, she could feel it slipping through her fingers, the safety and security that she had always thought would surround her. Outside, Harry and her brothers argued loudly over the World Cup, acting out plays over and over as if it were a normal sunny summer day and they had absolutely nothing to fear.

As if the whole world hadn’t changed. 

She trudged up the stairs and shrugged a little. Maybe it hadn’t. Maybe it had been this way all along. 

Hermione was sitting in their place, peering out the window at the boys in the garden, a small sad sort of smile on her face. Ginny sat down next to her and then shoved herself into Hermione’s space, lifting her legs up on Hermione’s lap and physically placing Hermione’s arm around her shoulder so that she could lean into her, as close as she could get. 

“The Victrola’s not on,” Ginny murmured into Hermione’s skin softly. 

Hermione leaned back, pulling Ginny a bit closer, and shook her head, “Not today. Today I wanted to _hear_.”

They sat in the sun, listening to the Weasleys argue and shout and laugh outside, to Mrs. Weasley in the kitchen swear when a pot boiled over, to Mr. Weasley cackle with glee in his workshop. They sat, wrapped up in each other, listening to the sounds of the Burrow, and of the other breathing.

Proof that they were still alive.

(Because sometimes the skin under your fingers just isn’t enough.)

ii

Ginny thought about kissing a lot. She’d been used by an immortal dead guy that half the world wanted dead and now she just wanted to feel normal.

After extensive research – mostly by pilfering her mother’s secret stash of romance novels from the pantry – she decided that _kissing_ would make her feel normal. Only there was no one around for her to kiss. Even in Egypt, there really hadn’t been anyone, or any time. 

Having brothers constantly underfoot was so annoying.

The Burrow was the most insular and self-sustaining house on the planet, she decided a week after returning from their trip. No one ever came to visit. No one ever left except to go to work or school. They had no neighbors. Aside from the Lovegoods, who went hiking in the Alps and wouldn’t be back until it was time to head to Platform 9 ¾. 

Hermione looked up from where she was sprawled on her stomach across the spare bed in Ginny’s room, a book between her elbows and her bare feet swinging in the air. 

“What has your panties in a twist?” Hermione said saucily, her wild hair bouncing with each syllable. 

Ginny considered the girl and a sudden, horrifying thought occurred to her, “You haven’t kissed Ron, _have you_?”

Hermione stared at her, owl-eyed and then leapt off the bed, “If he’s said so, I’ll punch him right in the jaw, see if I don’t.”

“No! He didn’t say anything,” (she didn’t think, she wasn’t privy to _all_ of Ron’s conversations, despite her superior eavesdropping skills), “I was just curious.”

The other girl relaxed, settling back down on the bed and bouncing a little. Ginny studied her. 

“Do you _want_ to kiss Ron?”

Hermione made a face and Ginny laughed. 

She sat down on her own bed, facing Hermione, and said bravely, “What about me?” Hermione’s face twisted into something Ginny didn’t really want to consider and so she pressed on, “I’ve never been kissed and I think… as an _experiment_.”

(Hermione _loved_ experiments.)

Hermione’s face lit up, “Sure! An experiment!” She stood up excitedly, “I’ve never much thought boys would be any fun to kiss anyway.”

Ginny stocked that away to consider later, and stood also.

They awkwardly pressed their lips together, pulled back and giggled a bit. 

Ginny shook her head, “You aren’t taking this very seriously.”

Hermione took a deep breath and dimpled at her, “Neither are you.”

Kissing, it turns out, is a bit awkward and a little wet and Ginny had no idea where to put her hands, except that when she reached up to rest them against Hermione’s neck, it caused a very strange reaction and that she rather liked the way Hermione held her hips still with _her_ hands and tilted her head to the side. 

“We’ll have to practice,” Hermione said afterwards, a bit too solemnly for Ginny’s taste. 

Ginny rather thought they were already perfect at it and was feeling one hundred percent more like a normal girl, but there didn’t seem to be any reason to stop and a thousand butterflies in her stomach told her to continue. 

“I don’t think I’d like to kiss anyone else,” she said softly, shyly. 

(Ginny was not a shy girl.)

Hermione exhaled a breath and slumped a little, as if being released from a great burden. “Me either,” she confessed. 

 

.

 

“It’s all over, isn’t it?”

The Burrow was settling into sleep. There were empty rooms where there shouldn’t have ever been empty space ever. There were tears falling somewhere and maybe a few empty beds because sleep doesn’t come easy – even to victors. 

Hermione slipped between the sheets and pressed her thin( _ner_ ) body next to Ginny’s ( _scarred_ ) body and reached out to hold her. 

“I think it’s finally beginning.”

**Author's Note:**

> Notes:
> 
>  **Section v:** 2001’s top billboard in England #2: Kylie Minogue’s _Can’t Get you Outta My Head_ and #3 Shaggy (featuring Rikrok) _It Wasn't Me_  
>  ((for the record: #1 was Atomic Kitten’s _Whole Again_ , but as a humble American author I have NEVER heard this song before??? So I didn’t feel equipped to mock it???))  
> (((also for the record: for the usa chart of 2001, Shaggy is at #12 and Kylie isn’t featured at all. So I have a bias, but I still did my best #dontsue)))
> 
>  **Section vi:** Hermione is reading _Jane Eyre_ , near the end of chapter 23, just before Rochester’s proposal; when Mrs. Weasley enters the room, Ginny says _It’s against the rules to be idle here_ , which is a reference to _Little Women_ , chapter 13 “Castles in the Air” – which the entire scene is partially based on ((both books are part of the public domain and available via books.google))


End file.
